Could wisdom teeth lead to opioid addiction?

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Dec. 3, 2018 / 10:17 PM GMT

At Maggie Fox

Teenagers and young adults who receive their first opioid recipe at the dentist &#821

1; when they have wisdom teeth outside – are more likely to come back for more pain relievers , reported researchers Monday.

They found that almost 7 percent of teens and adolescents who received an opioid for the first time at the dentist continued to take more of the drugs and more than 5 percent were going to abuse opioids.

Many of these patients had wisdom teeth, the researchers reported in the Journal of American Medical Association: JAMA Internal Medicine.

“This work gives rise to two really related but separate questions: Do we need opioids, and do we need the procedure?” Said Dr. Alan Schroeder, a clinical professor of pediatrician at Stanford University Medical School, who led the study group.

The researchers went through the records of more than 750,000 p eople with private health insurance by 2015. They were looking for opioid prescriptions for people aged 16-25 years. More than 97,000 of the 750,000 people received an opioid prescription in 2015 or 13 percent of them.

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And 30 percent of those who received opioids received prescription from a dentist, reported Schroeder’s team.

Of the teenagers and young adults who received an opioid prescription from the dentist for the first time in 2015, almost 7 percent continued to receive a second prescription in the next year. Almost none of those who did not receive an opioid prescription ever received a later year.

“Nearly 7 percent of these patients had new, permanent use at least three months after the original prescription and almost 6 percent had an opioid abuse diagnosis, says Schroeder.” It is quite alarming. “

The researchers did not speak to patients, so it is not clear why they received a second prescription, but only about one quarter received the other prescription from a dentist. Most received their analgesics from either an unknown medical type, emergency room or an orthopedic surgeon.

“The results indicate that tandopioid receptors, which can be driven by third molar extractions in this age group, can be associated with subsequent opioid use and opioid abuse, “the researchers wrote.

The United States suffers from a terrible epidemic of opioid overuse. The centers of disease control and prevention reported last month to 70,000 People died of drug overdose in 2017, most of them from accidental opioids Doses. So many are dying young people that have dampened their average life expectancy in the United States for two consecutive years.

The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration work to encourage doctors to prescribe something other than opioids for pain.

Dental schools at Tufts University, Boston University and Harvard have worked together to educate dentists about the risks of prescribing opioids. Dentist training at schools is taught to screen patients for the risk of becoming addicted to opioids and to talk to patients about the risks of taking them.

Maggie Fox

Maggie Fox is senior author of NBC News and Today, which includes health policy, science, medical treatments and diseases.